National Adult Literacy Database

October 22, 2012

The story below was written by Gordon Hope, from Huntingdon, Quebec. Gordon is enrolled in literacy classes at the Huntingdon Learning Centre. He is a recipient of the Canada Post Literacy Award (2007) for Individual Achievement.

My Journey to the Learning Center - Part 1

by Gordon Hope

I was born in Montreal and lived in an orphanage until I was adopted at the age of two or three. My parents lived in Franklin Centre, Quebec on a farm. They had dairy cows, horses, chickens, pigs, a dog and cats. They also grew apple trees and had a sugar bush. Life was good on a farm but hard for me because I was just a small boy. I learned to do chores, feed chickens, gather eggs and give milk to the calves. I filled the wood box in the kitchen even if it was two sticks at a time.  When I was about five, my father had a neighbour come with a saw and cut wood for the winter. That's when I was told to bring the wood to the shed and learn how to pile wood.

I didn't have much schooling, I would go one day a week and some times two or three days a week because I had to stay at home and work.

I learned very young how to milk cows by hand; it was hard at first but after some practice it got easier. I also learned to harness the horses but I had to use a stool to reach their backs. The horses were used for many jobs; to bring wood from the bush, cutting and raking hay, ploughing the fields and gathering sap in the spring.

To cut wood, I had to use a two handed saw and an axe. Later my father got a chain saw which made work a lot easier and faster. We cut wood for the furnace, kitchen stove and sugar shanty. I remember it well because one time I woke up in the hospital from being knocked out by a five or six inch branch.

My parents had a large garden. I didn't like pulling weeds and hoeing it. My mother also had a half acre of raspberry bushes, which was another chore I did not really enjoy because they were picky.

My uncle was a game warden; he gave me a job raising pheasants and partridges. He set me up with an incubator, pens, eggs and food. The eggs had to be turned every so often. I had to move the chicks to different pens as they grew older before being released into the wild.

There was a stream running through the middle of the farm; it was a wild raging river twelve feet wide in the spring. In the summer, it was just a trickle; there were more stones than water.

Part 2 | Part 3